Divided
by Shiro
Summary: The idea for this came from the fact that there are two 'titles' Larxene is known by the apathetic princess and the savage nymph. This is also written in a different style than my usual, but hopefully it'll work well.


**Title:** Divided

**Notes:** The idea for this came from the fact that there are two 'titles' Larxene is known by - the "apathetic princess" and the "savage nymph." This is also written in a different style than my usual, but hopefully it'll work well.  
**Date Written:** 5/17/06

_. the castle ._

1

The castle was large, and sometimes drafty, and even the smallest of sounds seemed magnified by the echoes that reverberated off the walls. There were three towers, though one was half-wrecked, and the roof over one of the rooms was notorious for leaking when it rained. There were stairways leading everywhere and nowhere, doors that opened into other doors, or hidden passages. Kitchens, bathrooms, far more bedrooms than were necessary (guests weren't all that frequent), and one of the largest libraries for several thousand miles.

It wasn't the easiest of places to reach; timing was everything, if you wished to avoid the lightning, the wind, and the downpour that surrounded the area as a safety precaution. All real, all moving constantly across the surface of the planet. All protecting the castle at its center, the Castle in the Storm as it was called.

She lived there, among the thunder and the rain, with a good many servants who had worked for her family for generations. Her parents were dead, their graves out in back, the unfortunate result of an electrical accident on a particularly humid day.

So the castle belonged solely to her.

2

The castle is large, and sometimes drafty, and doesn't really exist at all. It stretches upward, floor after floor, each the same white tiles and marble columns. Somewhere, there is a small collection of books. Somewhere, a kitchen, a bathroom, beds and chairs. There are doors with peculiar-shaped keyholes that open into empty space, but no one needs to use them.

It's easier to reach than you'd think, though you shouldn't want to find it. It needs no protection from the outside, from the weather, from prying eyes. There _is_ no outside, no weather, and all who live within it have prying eyes. A castle of nothing, the Castle of Oblivion, it is called.

They live there - six of them who come and go occasionally, when the mood strikes them. Though they aren't truly alive, not completely, and their actions sometimes are simply mimicry of what they remember of feeling, when they were whole. She spends much of her time in the library, though her reading material is darker now than it had once been.

Here, the castle belongs to him.

_. the storm ._

1

The world was often shadowed by rainclouds, hallways lit with lamps and candles and fires built to crackle in fireplaces throughout the castle. Rain beat hard on the roof, hard on the man in the dark cloak who approached the front door. He was soaked, his clothing clinging to his skin, though he seemed to have appeared from thin air.

They let him into the castle, to dry off and wait out the weather. He was a stranger, though one with a silver tongue and a sly smile.

She laughed outright when he hinted how he had expected to find an elderly man in charge of such a place. She took his flattery in stride, and the storm outside lasted for months. It was hardly unusual.

The name he gave was Marluxia.

2

The world is shadowed, always. There is light, in hallways and passages, but it gives them no warmth, and they shy away from it. The weather hardly changes, and the sky is always the same shade of inky grey, tinged with midnight blue. The water is calm, the buildings are rectangles of light against the darkened sky.

Inside is white marble, and thirteen seats of varying heights. She sits in one, second-to-last, and looks to be listening intently to what the others say. The truth is, she doesn't care in the least. Outside, rain falls and puddles form in the gutters and along the streets.

She'll get soaked if she goes outside, and she doesn't want to ruin her hair.

To her right, Marluxia gives her a look, but she acts as if she doesn't see it.

_. heartless ._

1

He brought with him a darkness the likes of which her world had never known. She would be more useful, he said, as half a person. Like him. Small black creatures with glowing yellow eyes had filled the halls, snuffed out the lights. They clawed their way through her chest, and she felt her heart stop.

2

The others are used to her taunts by now. It's what she does to get attention, and more often than not, they play along when she says they're breaking her heart. It's something she's missing, though a heart beats in her chest. It's just not the same as it would be.

_. nobody ._

1

The castle is haunted, some say, by a black shape that had once been a person. It is now only half, and it looks for hearts in an attempt to replace what was taken from it. There are no people left in the castle, though they tried to stay as long as possible.

She was their princess, now the princess of a ruined castle, a mere shadow of her former self.

2

The floor was cold, and hard, and even through her clothes she could feel it. The walls were of white marble, and she felt that something was missing, though she couldn't tell what. Dark lines streaked across the tiles in front of her, forming into letters and a name she recognized.

R-E-L-E-N-A.

She watched, intruiged, as the letters rearranged themselves, jumping over one another to form a second name. Between the middlemost two letters, a new shadow crisscrossed into an "x," and the letters solidified for a moment before vanishing into the tiles once more.

L-A-R-X-E-N-E.

In the back of her mind remained the image of a castle, and a storm, and as she slowly stood, lightning crackled between her fingers.

She still remembered what it felt like to be whole, though that would eventually fade.


End file.
